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Can be used for year 7 Liveability Curriculum

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Using Editorial and Political Cartoons to analyse Australian attitudes towards Asia

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Using Editorial and Political Cartoons to analyse Australian attitudes towards Asia

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Looking at Historical attitudes towards Chinese migrants using art and source analysis

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Looking at Historical attitudes towards Chinese migrants using art and source analysis

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•What have I learnt?

•What are the key messages I will take into my classroom practice?

•What am I going to do to build Asia literacy?

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by the Department of Education and Training

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National Statement on Asia Literacy in Australian Schools2011–2012

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National Statement on Asia Literacy in Australian Schools2011–2012

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Food and cultural practices of the Chinese Living in Australia

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Food and cultural practices of the Chinese Living in Australia

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Australia and China: A Geographical Comparison of Chinese Cuisine

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Australia and China: A Geographical Comparison of Chinese Cuisine

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Speak to the typical Australian and they will undoubtedly tell you that Chinese food is, well, Chinese food. In Australia, Chinese food tends to be perceived as a singular cuisine, just like Thai, Indian or Italian. But we are missing the regional subtleties and nuances of a cuisine that can hardly be viewed as possessing any kind of uniformity. China is the largest country in the world, with 9.7 million square kilometres, 56 ethnic groups, and countless regional dialects. Once a typical Australian becomes a typical Australian-traveller-in-China, treasured childhood memories of sweet and sour pork served with a bowl of peas-and-corn dotted fried rice are fundamentally challenged, and Chinese cuisine is discovered to be one of the richest and most diverse experiences life will throw at you. This is the story of my culinary journey across China; one that began in Kunming in Yunnan province and took me up to Harbin in northeast China before coming back down the coast to Shanghai.

It is often said that Yunnan is the most ethnically diverse region in China. Kunming, its capital, is the economic, communications and cultural centre. To dine in Kunming is to indulge in the refined traditions of a medley of ethnic minority groups. You can order just about anything, from chilli chicken or fragrant tofu dishes to fried pigeon and bullfrog dumplings. I came across a quaint local hotspot while wandering along Xiba Road and yielded to the insistence of a waiter to try the Hui ethnic specialty 'sweet and sour grape fish' (tangcu putaoyu 糖醋葡萄鱼).The fish was filleted, scored in a criss-cross pattern, and seasoned in tapioca starch before being fried. When the fillets rest they curl back on themselves and reveal a careful assemblage of beaded flesh that resembles - you might have guessed it already - a bunch of grapes. Topped with a generous douse of sweet and sour sauce and a sprinkle of fresh coriander, the dish is spicy, fresh, moist and sweet; a welcome change from the stodgy 'sweet and sour' Chinese food back home.

Take a step outside Kunming and Yunnan is an ever more expansive example of true Chinese diversity. The 'hot and sour fish' (suanlayu 酸辣鱼) of the Bai people in Dali is served in a ceramic vessel filled with a soupy broth and chunks of silken tofu, shallots and garlic chives. Bamboo bugs (zhuchong 竹虫) seem to be popular throughout the province. These witchetty-grub-looking creatures are served with a special flair in each different location. In Dali they resemble a nice warm packet of salt and vinegar chips, while a seven-hour bus ride away in the city of Tengchong the vinegar is replaced with a scattering of dried chillies. One of the biggest culinary surprises in Yunnan, however, is the local love for cheese. Most Australians and indeed most Chinese would not associate 'Chinese food' with cheese, but the Bai and Sani people of Yunnan pride themselves on their pan-fried goat cheese.

Take a coach north and you will enter the province of Sichuan, known for its especial appreciation of spicy food. Sydney actually boasts a decent selection of restaurants dedicated to the Sichuan palate, all of which prominently promote their distinguishing feature: chilli! But a trip to the Red Chilli Sichuan Restaurant in Darling Harbour or the Spicy Sichuan Restaurant on Glebe Point Road will not prepare you for the complexity of flavours available in Sichuan. One notable difference in China is the predominance of the Sichuan peppercorn. Not widely available in Australia, and if so rarely used in excess, the sheer volume of peppercorns in an authentic Sichuan dish jolts you to attention - your mouth numbs to the point that your lips limp and start drooling as if under dental anaesthetic. Sichuan dishes at the other end of the scale, those that involve little or no spice, are more of a surprise. A popular dish in Chengdu is a somewhat bland and gluggy pig trotter broth rumoured to improve skin quality. Young club-goers crowd into late-night restaurants to indulge in 'skin care treatment' before going home to sleep off their hangovers.

Sichuan cuisine is further divided into four regional sub-styles, the most pronounced of which is the Chongqing style, known for a searing spiciness that is matched only by the city's scorching summer temperatures. 'Chongqing hot pot' (Chongqing huoguo 重庆火锅) is its most well known representative dish, and walking into a little downtown hole-in-the-wall eatery I was somewhat on edge thinking about the heat I was about to subject myself to. The menu presented a new problem as I found myself perplexedly searching for the familiar characters of 'beef', 'chicken' and 'tofu', and beginning to notice that the dish names read more like 'fresh torn pig oesophagus' and 'duck intestines'. Chongqing hotpot is definitely only for the most adventurous of Australian gourmets!

Meander further along the Yangtze River and you come to the city of Wuhan in Hubei province. Although every Chinese city seems to have whole avenues dedicated to street food, Wuhan Snack Street (Hubu Xiang 户部巷), gives a miss to the obvious tourist-luring approaches of serving live scorpions and seahorse skewers, which are found all over the up-market westernised Wangfujing area of Beijing. Wuhan Snack Street is instead an exemplar of traditional local treats such as soup buns, spicy duck neck and dry fried noodles. The soup buns (tangbao 汤包) in Wuhan are larger than any I have ever seen in Australia, and have a skewer-sized hole in the top that acts as a straw through which to drink the delicious liquid inside before munching down the rest.

Skip across to the north-eastern coastal city of Qingdao, famous of course for its ubiquitous brewery, and you find a local diet consisting primarily of seafood, including such things as sea cucumbers, cuttlefish eggs and starfish. Qingdao's equivalent of the Wuhan Snack Street boasts a smorgasbord of fresh seafood, with vendors lining the walkways barbequing everything from octopus skewers to fish balls. Kegs of draught beer are perched along the street side, creating a scene truly unique to Qingdao!

Along the east coast of China I was exposed to more familiar dishes as I found my way into large cities with strong historical connections abroad. 'Peking duck' (Beijing kaoya 北京烤鸭) is perhaps the most famous of all Chinese dishes. The main Quanjude 全聚德 Peking duck restaurant in Beijing takes up five city blocks and can seat 5,000 guests. The restaurant is known worldwide and local, national and international patrons crowd its doors for a taste of the immaculately prepared fare. The restaurant only uses plump 2.5-kilogram ducks that are bellowed before roasting, allowing the skin to separate from the flesh and keeping the meat juicy while still making the skin rich and crispy. The roasting is done with plum, peach and date tree stems so as to infuse a fruity flavour into the flesh. A team of specially trained chefs, whose sole duty is to control the roasting of the ducks, carefully monitor the whole process. The duck is then brought to the table and carved by a chef who, it is claimed, produces 120 exactly even slices of meat and skin from each duck. The overall experience of eating at Quanjude, whilst exciting and extravagant, is actually reminiscent of the East Ocean Restaurant or Golden Century in Sydney's Haymarket district. Each dish seems familiar and each element, down to the condiments, is a perfect clone.

Shanghai is a truly international city. A soup and sandwich lunch accompanied by a bottle of red wine - I could be virtually anywhere. But Shanghai also has its own unique Chinese food culture, and possibly the most comprehensive selection of dumplings available in China. Just outside the French Concession, I happened across a restaurant offering the stunning dish of 'fried whelks in XO Sauce' (XO jiang chaohailuo XO 酱炒海螺). The whelk meat had been removed from the shells, finely sliced, and wok fried with a light drizzle of XO sauce. The presentation was immaculate, with the whelk flesh resting on a bed of roughly chopped celery and carrot, and the shells perched atop a piped quenelle of pomme puree. The presentation, flavours and cooking technique were on par with some of Australia's finest dining, and a far cry from the dishes I had enjoyed in more rural areas of China.

Chinese cuisine is anything but uniform and each region boasts local variations, often far removed from the preconceptions that Australians might have. But there are also notable similarities between particular regions and even across the country. The city of Zigong is known for its barbeque skewers, but these grilled rods of chicken, chilli enoki or quail eggs appear in various guises in Chengdu, Xi'an and even as far north as Harbin. The renowned Chinese 'stuffed bun' (baozi 包子) can be found at street-side vendor stalls throughout China, although the typically larger buns of Beijing or Hangzhou tend to be bought per piece whilst cities in the southwest are inclined towards making smaller bite-sized buns bought by the steamer tray. When travelling through China I tend to judge places by the quality of their baozi, and will find myself tenaciously hunting for some similar to the luscious petite buns I once found being sold in a Tengchong industrial alleyway. Other Chinese purveyors have come close to the quality I found there, but in Sydney I have never been able to locate baozi that even come remotely resembling my Tengchong ideal.

Recent computer science research conducted by Yuxiao Zhu of the Beijing Computational Science Research Centre may shed some academic light on my observations of the regional divergences and similarities in Chinese cuisine (see: http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.3185). The study analyses recipes and ingredients from the website http://www.meishij.net/and plots geographical links according to resemblances between dishes. This produced a 'map' of Chinese cuisine that revealed an interlocking web of similarities, which have been produced not only by local climates and produce, but also the movement and interaction of the people between regions.

Australian Chinese food is made from Australian or perhaps other imported ingredients and will probably never be able to perfectly mimic its Chinese origins. The differences, however, are about more than simply ingredients. The truth is that the people from certain areas of China (e.g. Guangdong) with whom Australians have had the most interaction exert an influence on the type of Chinese cuisine we experience in Australia. People-to-people culinary interactions are translated into Australian society and mean Chinese food is gradually adapted to better suit the Australian palate.

The latest edition of Larousse Gastronomique, commonly known as the 'chef's bible', describes cooking as a reflection of the "customs of its age and present-day habits and preferences as well as those of the immediate past". We often think of cuisine as a representation of a nation's traditions, but it actually represents the traditional, the recent and the present. Perhaps Yuxiao Zhu should add Australia to the map of Chinese cuisine and draw out the likenesses and differences in ingredients and cooking techniques. What we would find, I believe, is that Chinese food in Australia represents a patchwork of similarities with especially the southeast coastal regions of China. It represents elements of an ancient culture but draws influence from recent histories and current trends of geographical mobility.

When Australians talk about 'Chinese food', they are generally not describing the food of China. They are referring to a cuisine that is distinctly Australian-Chinese and which only represents one linkage in a wide web collectively referred to as 'Chinese cuisine'. You have not truly experienced Chinese food until you have eaten your way around its intricacies in China. This is what made me finally realise that it will never be possible to find perfect Tengchong baozi in Sydney.
This article appears in the 2013 ACYA Journal of Australia-China Affairs (pp. 102-104). Bowany Pugh has an Honours Degree in Chinese Studies and is currently undertaking her Masters in International Law at the University of Sydney. She has travelled extensively throughout China and lived in-country for the purposes of both work and study.

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Speak to the typical Australian and they will undoubtedly tell you that Chinese food is, well, Chinese food. In Australia, Chinese food tends to be perceived as a singular cuisine, just like Thai, Indian or Italian. But we are missing the regional subtleties and nuances of a cuisine that can hardly be viewed as possessing any kind of uniformity.

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Cultural Differences between Australia and China

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Open the Internet Browser Click Tools (or "gear" icon at top right hand corner) > Internet Options > Privacy > Advanced Check Override automatic cookie handling For First-party Cookies and Third-party Cookies click Accept Click OK and OK Enabling Cookies in Internet Explorer 10, 11 Open the Internet Browser Click the Tools button, and then click Internet Options.

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Shanghai, which literally means the "City on the Sea," lies on the Yangzi River delta at the point where China's main waterway completes its 5,500-km (3,400-mi) journey to the Pacific. Until 1842 Shanghai's location made it merely a small fishing village. After the first Opium War, however, the British named Shanghai a treaty port, opening the city to foreign involvement.

The village was soon turned into a city carved up into autonomous concessions administered concurrently by the British, French, and Americans, all independent of Chinese law. Each colonial presence brought with it its particular culture, architecture, and society.

Although Shanghai had its own walled Chinese city, many native residents still chose to live in the foreign settlements. Thus began a mixing of cultures that shaped Shanghai's openness to Western influence. Shanghai became an important industrial center and trading port that attracted not only foreign businesspeople (60,000 by the 1930s) but also Chinese migrants from other parts of the country.

In its heyday, Shanghai was the place to be -- it had the best art, the greatest architecture, and the strongest business in Asia. With dance halls, brothels, glitzy restaurants, international clubs, and even a foreign-run racetrack, Shanghai was a city that catered to every whim of the rich. But poverty ran alongside opulence, and many of the lower-class Chinese provided the cheap labor that kept the city running.

The Paris of the East became known as a place of vice and indulgence. Amid this glamour and degradation the Communist Party held its first meeting in 1921. In the 1930s and '40s, the city weathered raids, invasions, then outright occupation by the Japanese. The party was over. By 1943, at the height of World War II, most foreigners had fled and the concessions had been ceded to the Japanese, bringing Shanghai's 101 years as a treaty port to a close. Despite the war's end, fighting continued as Nationalists and Communists fought a three-year civil war for control of China. The Communists declared victory in 1949 and established the People's Republic of China, after which the few remaining foreigners left the country. Closed off from the outside world with which it had become so comfortable, Shanghai fell into a deep sleep. Fashion, music, and romance gave way to uniformity and the stark reality of Communism.

The decades from 1950 to 1980 passed by with one Five Year Plan after another, marked by periods of extreme famine and drought, reform and suppression. Shanghai's industries soldiered on during these years; the city remained the largest contributor of tax revenue to the central government. Its political contribution, however, had far greater ramifications: the city was the powder keg for the Cultural Revolution and the base of operations for the infamous Gang of Four, led by Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing. The so-called January Storm of 1967 purged many of Shanghai's leaders, and Red Guards in Shanghai fervently carried out their destruction of the "Four Olds": old ways of idea, living, traditions, and thought.

Yet, in 1972, with the Cultural Revolution still raging, Shanghai hosted the historic meeting that would help lay the groundwork for the China of today. Premier Zhou Enlai and U.S. president Richard Nixon signed the Shanghai Communiqué, which enabled the two countries to normalize relations and encouraged China to open talks with the rest of the world. Twenty years later, the 14th Party Congress endorsed the concept of a socialist market economy, opening the door ever wider to foreign investment.

Today Shanghai has once again become one of China's most open cities ideologically, socially, culturally, and economically, striving to return to the internationalism that defined it before the Revolution. Shanghai's path to this renewed prominence began in 1990 when China's leader, Deng Xiaoping, chose it as the engine of the country's commercial renaissance, aiming to rival Hong Kong by 2010. If China is a dragon, he said, Shanghai is its head. Indeed the city is once again all about business. Having embraced competition and a market-driven economy in just a few years, it now hosts the nation's stock market, accounts for approximately one-fifth of the country's gross national product, and serves as the most important industrial base in the nation.

Today, beauty and charm coexist with kitsch and commercialism. From the colonial architecture of the former French Concession to the forest of cranes and the neon-lighted high-rises jutting above the city, Shanghai is a city of paradox and change.

Revised by Kristin Baird Rattini

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Riding to work doesn't have to involve lycra. Beyond Neon

CYCLING IN AUSTRALIA: I'm living in the middle suburbs of Shanghai - a great cycling metropolis. Bike-riding rates are 30 to 40 times higher than Australian cities.

Hardly anyone wears lycra or rides a mountain or racing bike here. Cycling is all about "effortless" propulsion at low speeds on cheap, upright city bicycles in everyday clothes. People ride at half the speed of my mates in Australia, never breaking a sweat.

Everyone rides here: grandmothers, professors, street sweepers, office workers, my guitar teacher, children. It is these " missing " bicycle riders we don't see in Australia. Those going to the shop, the train station or the pub on a bicycle, instead of walking or driving a short distance.

So how do we target these groups?

We are certainly going in some good directions with bicycle policies and programs in many of Australia's major cities, turning back 60 years of disinvestment in cycling. But how do we take the next step?

Here are some suggestions, based on comparative experiences and tied to practical policy changes.

John Pucher and Ralph Buehler's analysis of cycling across countries demonstrates that by putting dollars into cycling infrastructure, supporting it with sensible policies, restraining cars from their worst excesses, and encouraging cycling in practical ways, cities make riding " irresistible ".

jessielein

Australian cities are now making tentative starts on this agenda. Off-road and on-road networks are being built, especially in the inner-cities. Bicycle parking is more common. " Share the road " and similar education campaigns are in use.

But have you ever noticed how much of Australia's cycling policy, programs, projects and culture is focused on long-distance and high-speed cycling? There is little attention to low-speed, everyday, short-hop bicycle riding.

We have a thriving sports cycling scene in Australia ( all hail Cadel!). And we have a burgeoning group of long-distance commuters willing to ride heroic distances to work. But these are not the people you see in most "cycling cities".

How do we make Australian cities more like Shanghai? How do we get people riding as part of their everyday habits? How do we make cycling normal?

For starters, infrastructure is critical.

Every arterial road built in Shanghai includes a bicycle lane, usually barricaded from cars. This makes a continuous network of safe routes right across the urban area.

Matthew Burke

Many state and local governments have adopted similar policies in Australia, albeit without the barricades, and much new infrastructure is coming from this enlightened stance.

But guess who has no such policy? Infrastructure Australia. This means the only part of government not willing to spend 0.5% or less of its urban road budget on ensuring a viable future cycling network is our federal government.

Secondly, low street speeds make for safer bicycle riding in Shanghai.

China has clearly got issues with dangerous driver and rider behaviour. But trauma rates are lower than one might expect as traffic speeds are low on suburban streets; usually around 30km/h.

At this speed, cars, motorcyclists and bike riders have more time to negotiate in traffic. The accidents that might occur at higher speeds just don't happen, and the collisions that do occur (I've seen a couple) are usually benign.

The 50km/h posted street speed limit in local streets in Australia, and 40km/h in school zones, are therefore an international embarrassment, set way higher than norms in cities such as Berlin.

Thirdly, is it only me, or are Australian bicycle shops too daunting for the prospective rider who just wants a cheap trundler for going down to the shop and back? They're full of the accoutrements of Australian cycling culture's obsessions with speed and gleaming high-end technical machinery. Look in the shop window and there's a $10,000 racing machine staring back at you.

triplefivedrew

In Shanghai bike shops often cater only to those wanting a cheap low-speed bike. They are staggeringly normal places, bereft of weird clothing, bike computers, training manuals and the other gear we find in Australia. Cycling is normal.

Effortless cycling relies on different bikes too. In Shanghai most have chain-guards, mudguards, baskets and rear racks. There are cheap folding bikes you can put in your apartment, small wheeled machines and classic old-school bikes.

Mountain bikes dominate sales in Australian discount department stores. But they are not the design of choice for effortless riding. Without a chain guard they chew your trousers, almost forcing you to wear special "cycling" clothes.

Shanghai has electric bicycles (e-bikes) by their millions. These are less safe than a motorcar, despite being speed regulated to only 20km/h, but are more sustainable. The safer versions of the e-bike are banned from use in Australia under current road rules. These rules need urgent review.

Finally, the experience of the UK's Cycling Cities and Towns initiative suggests focusing effort on a specific urban area will have more impact on ridership than scattergun investment.

The Queensland Government's ( Transport and Main Roads 2011) pilot "active towns" project concentrates resources on only one location. There will be significant interest in how this affects cycling participation rates in involved cities such as Mackay.

If this approach is successful in the Australian context, as it has been in the UK, then expect the model to be more widely applied.

The next evolution in our thinking and our practices must be towards effortless cycling. Adopting these ideas may get us further towards that agenda.
Read the rest of the Cycling in Australia series.

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Effortless cycling: how do we make riding a bike normal?

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CYCLING IN AUSTRALIA: I'm living in the middle suburbs of Shanghai - a great cycling metropolis. Bike-riding rates are 30 to 40 times higher than Australian cities. Hardly anyone wears lycra or rides a mountain or racing bike here. Cycling is all about "effortless" propulsion at low speeds on cheap, upright city bicycles in everyday clothes.

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Southbank is an inner urban neighbourhood of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 1 km south of Melbourne's central business district. Its local government area are the Cities of Melbourne and Port Phillip. At the 2011 Census, Southbank had a population of 11,235. Its northernmost area is considered part of the Central Business District and Central Activities District of the City.

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The Bund or Waitan ( Chinese: 外滩; pinyin: , Shanghainese: nga 3thae 1, literally: "Outer Beach") is a waterfront area in central Shanghai. The area centers on a section of Zhongshan Road (East-1 Zhongshan Road) within the former Shanghai International Settlement, which runs along the western bank of the Huangpu River in the eastern part of Huangpu District.

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"Shanghai, a modern metropolis born of a refugee crisis" 

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"Shanghai, a modern metropolis born of a refugee crisis" 

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When George Balfour, the first appointed British consul of Shanghai, envisaged the future of his British-only settlement at the end of 1843, he stood on a piece of marshland by the Huangpu River.

Balfour could not have imagined in his wildest dreams the prosperous modern metropolis to come. The settlement was to be built, first and foremost, to house an influx of refugees from the Chinese hinterland.

Balfour's master plan was neither visionary nor inspirational; it was a rudimentary division of land blocks driven by sheer pragmatism. East-west roads were laid towards the Huangpu River bank, which has lasted to this day as the enduring urban feature of Shanghai - the Bund.

The early buildings in the British settlement - consulates, trade offices and houses, sitting oddly on the muddy ground to the Chinese eye - were not meant to last. The settlers slept rough. Hoping to make a quick fortune in Shanghai, they did not intend to stay put for long.

This piece of "wasteland" of one-kilometre-long river frontage with easy waterways connecting to the vast interior turned out to be the most convenient and indeed strategic location for the British. The French too quickly saw the advantage. In 1856 they secured the segment between the old Shanghai town and the British Bund as the French Bund, though not as grand.

A haven in times of conflict

A remarkable population boom and prosperity occurred in the second decade of foreign settlement when droves of Chinese refugees sought sojourn in the safe haven of foreign concession lands.

During years of turmoil, which started with the threat of the Small Sword Society in the old Shanghai town and continued until the collapse of Taiping Tianguo in 1864, the British Shanghai was never taken. More than 30 million people lost their lives during the 14 years of revolution and rebellion.

It was against this background that the Chinese refugees flocked to the foreign settlements. By 1865, the population in Shanghai's foreign concession had reached 150,000. This was 21.5% of the entire population in Shanghai and included approximately 110,000 Chinese.

Although foreign merchants were predominantly involved in trading (opium, silk, cotton and tea), building houses and letting them to the Chinese refugees proved to be far more profitable than what they originally set out to do.

An English merchant declared his naked business ambition to Balfour's successor as British consul, Rutherford Alcock. With a profit margin of 30-40% in this property development business, he showed zero concern for Shanghai's future:

In two or three years at farthest, I hope to realise a fortune and get away; what can it matter to me, if all Shanghai disappears afterwards, in fire or flood?

This was the first time in Chinese history that the notion of profit-driven property development was explicitly displayed before the Chinese. The segregation of Chinese and foreigners as determined by land regulations was broken. The consuls of Britain, America and France subsequently revised these without any consultation with the Qing Court.

Rise of a modern metropolis

The influx of people into the foreign settlements also enabled the inevitable transition of economic structure - that is, the shift from a primarily trade-driven one to that of production and industry.

In addition to the building industry, reeling mills, yarn and flour factories emerged on the banks of the Huangpu River and Suzhou Creek. These provided a vital force that pushed the unskilled farmers from the hinterland into various trades - a marker of the rapid urbanisation and modernisation of Shanghai.

kafka4prez/flickr, CC BY-SA

The early houses were makeshift timber terraces built in shanty construction, which were known as li (the ancient name of neighbourhood). But the governments of foreign settlement abolished this sort of construction after 1870, mainly because it was prone to fire.

From then on, the mixed construction of timber and masonry called (stone gate building) had gradually replaced the early makeshift timber terraces as the dominant residential pattern and urban form of modern Shanghai.

Better built and more costly than the earlier timber houses, the parsimony of their land use meant dwellings were clustered together like the English terrace house, one next to the other within the parallel urban grids of the streets and laneways. Being low maintenance and high rent, the shiku men housing became very popular in Shanghai.

This form of housing quickly spread over the old Shanghai town and other places occupied only by the Chinese. The country gentry and land owners had their first taste of modern urban life when they stayed in these houses. They were small, confined, dark and poorly ventilated.

The Confucian world of paterfamilias, though tenuously held by the hall and symmetry of the old shiku men, begun to be shaken by the distraction and allure offered by the larger interior of the city.

The extension of confined shiku men to the laneways and street led to the world of delicious and exotic food, intoxicating drinks, shops selling fine things, sleazy opium dens and brothels, splendid dancing halls holding elegant balls, racetracks and casinos. All were irresistible.

The porosity between the house and street became the precursor of a lively urban life. It exuded the glitter of the city as the replacement of the internalised Confucian world - the courtyard. "Shanghai petty urbanites", coined by one of Shanghai's favourite literary daughters, the exceedingly talented Eileen Chang, are symbiotic with this urban fabric that houses them.

Shanghai could hardly be recognised as a Chinese city. But Chang laid bare her affection for the intoxicated city and its residents:

Shanghai people are distilled from traditional Chinese people under the pressure of modern life; they are the product of a deformed mix of old and new culture. The result may not be healthy, but in it there is also a curious wisdom.

Rooted in its inception as an asylum haven, one aspect of this "curious wisdom" appears to be xenophilia. It is telling that, unlike xenophobia, this word is a modern coinage.

Modern Shanghai was soon more globalised than today's European Union - no-one needed a passport, let alone a visa, to enter Shanghai. That some 20,000 Jewish refugees were embraced in Shanghai during the second world war was another example of the innate character of this modern metropolis.

Such magnanimous urbanity has arguably continued to this day. As the popular saying goes, Shanghai is the sea where all rivers run into it.

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Shanghai, a modern metropolis born of a refugee crisis

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When George Balfour, the first appointed British consul of Shanghai, envisaged the future of his British-only settlement at the end of 1843, he stood on a piece of marshland by the Huangpu River. Balfour could not have imagined in his wildest dreams the prosperous modern metropolis to come.

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1. What are three key differences between the economy/history/geography of Melbourne and Shanghai?
2. Refer to key examples of each city that relate to these similarities or differences.

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Melbourne () is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in Australia and Oceania. The name "Melbourne" covers an urban agglomeration spanning 2,664 km 2 (1,029 sq mi), which comprises the broader metropolitan area, as well as being the common name for its city centre.

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Shanghai is one of the four direct-controlled municipalities of China and the most populous city proper in the world with a population of more than 24 million as of 2014. It is a global financial centre and transport hub, with the world's busiest container port.

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The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Shanghai, China.

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Timeline of Melbourne history - Wikipedia

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This is a timeline of major events in the history of the city of Melbourne, Australia.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po0O9tRXCyA